Chapter Five: Rules

"It's not over, and it's not that easy."

Lise sat in the gutter, trying to shove her windpipe back into her throat. Janelle squatted on the hood of the '14 Cadillac next to her, claws still out and dripping. There was blood on her jacket, too, but it didn't show against the black. She smiled a long, thin smile down at Lise, the sort of smile a cat makes when it sees a broken-backed mouse still trying to get away.

"You're done, Lise," she said. "But not right away. You get to last the night." Lise made a noise deep in the wreck of her throat. It might have been "Go to hell." Janelle ignored her mumble, ignored the sound of sirens off in the distance. "But tomorrow night, I'm going to find you again, and I'm going to do the exact same thing to you. And I'm going to keep doing it every night until I get bored, or until the bishop tells me it's time. But try to leave the city, I'll find out and I'll kill you. Try to get help, and I'll find out and I'll kill you. Your chance - now or later."

Lise spat blood and tried to stand. Idly, Janelle slapped her back down into the gutter, then stretched and slid down off the car's hood. "Tomorrow. Sundown. It's a date," she purred, and walked unhurriedly away from the light.

The only reason to have rules in a game, especially a
storytelling game like Vampire, is to more or less level the
playing field. The Storyteller can adjudicate most things in her
Vampire game, deciding on her own whether or not the characters accomplish the actions they attempt. But truly unbiased
rulings need some sort of standard or precedent, just so everybody knows that everyone's getting the same treatment.

Hence, rules.

Vampire uses only a few basic rules to get things done, but
these rules can have countless permutations in the context of the
game. This chapter covers the very basics, such as rolling dice; more specific, detail-oriented rules can be found throughout the
book. Don't worry about mastering all the permutations at once
- learn these basic rules first, and then everything else will
come naturally.

Over the course of the game, time is presumed to pass as it
would in the normal world - Tuesday follows Monday, month
after month, and so on. However, there's no need to roleplay out
every second ticking away. There's a huge difference between
the speeds at which "game" time and real time pass. Over a four-hour game session, a week, month or even year might pass in the
setting of the game - or the entire session might be spent
detailing the events of an action-packed half-hour. You can play
out a combat turn by turn, taking it in three-second increments,
or you can let months pass away in a few minutes of real time.
(The passage of time without players taking any real actions is
called "downtime"; learning to use this little trick can help the
pacing of your game immensely.)

To help maintain a sense of the passage of time without
resorting to tedious charts and the like, Vampire uses six basic
units to describe game time:

- Turn - The amount of time you need to take a fairly
simple action; this can range anywhere from three seconds to
three minutes, depending on the pace of the current scene.

- Scene - Like the basic division of plays and movies, a
scene is a compact period of action and interaction that takes
place in a single location. This could be the storming of a
Tremere chantry, or a moonlit conversation on a park bench.
There are exactly as many turns in a scene as the scene requires
- there might not even be any turns if the scene consists of
nothing but dialogue and character interaction.

- Chapter - An independent part of a story, virtually
always played out in one game session. It consists of a number of
scenes interconnected by downtime (see below); essentially,
like a chapter in a novel or an act in a play.

- Story - A full tale, complete with introduction, rising
action and climax. Some stories can take several chapters to
complete; others can be finished in one.

- Chronicle - A series of stories connected by the characters themselves and their ongoing narrative, possibly even by a
common theme or overarching plot.

- Downtime - Time that is "glossed over" with description rather than played out turn by turn or scene by scene. If the
Storyteller says, "You wait in the foyer for four hours before the
prince's ghoul summons you," rather than actually letting the
characters play out their wait, the Storyteller is considered to be
invoking downtime. Downtime allows trivial or tedious passages
of time to be played through quickly.

Over the course of a game, your character will do many
things. Some of these tasks are considered actions, while others
aren't. Speeches and conversations aren't considered actions as
such - but just about everything else, from throwing a punch at your sire to trying to decipher a code, is probably an action. One
action typically takes one turn (see above) of game time to
complete.

It's easy enough to attempt an action - just tell the
Storyteller what your character's trying to do and how she plans
to go about it. And most actions - crossing the street or loading
a pistol, for instance - are easy enough to be considered
automatically successful. However, if you're trying to cross a
four-lane highway full of speeding trucks, or trying to reload
while you're hanging from a fire escape by one hand, there's a
chance you might fail. So when there's reasonable doubt whether
an action will succeed or not, you may have to roll dice to
determine the results.

Reflexives

Not everything that your character actually does
counts as an action. For instance, spending a blood point
to increase an Attribute is considered to take less than a
second of game time - no dice are rolled, and your
character can do this while doing something else. Such
a "free action" is called a reflexive - in essence, a feat that
doesn't require taking an action to accomplish.

Reflexives include such activities as spending blood
points to increase Attributes, soaking damage, making a
Virtue check, or activating Celerity to take extra actions.
They aren't considered actions in any real way - you don't
have to subtract from your dice pool to soak damage while
you're firing a gun, for example. Of course, you still have to
be conscious to perform many reflexives, but they don't get
in the way of anything else you want to do in a turn.

Although the Storyteller is within perfect rights to declare
whether a given action succeeds or fails (usually for dramatic
purposes), in many cases chance enters into the equation.
Therefore, Vampire uses a simple, portable form of "chance in a
pocket" - dice. To be specific, Vampire uses 10-sided dice; you
can find these in any game store or even many bookstores. The
Storyteller may need quite a few; players need plenty as well, but
can share among themselves. Ten dice are all that a beginning
character will need at a given time.

You roll dice whenever the outcome of an action is in doubt
or the Storyteller thinks there's a chance your character might
fail. Your character's strengths and weaknesses affect the number
of dice you roll, and thus directly affect your chances of success.

Ratings

Although your character's personality is limited only by
your imagination, his capabilities are defined by his Traits - all
of his innate and learned aptitudes and abilities. Each Trait is
described by a rating of 1 to 5; a 1 in a Trait is barely competent,
while a 5 is the pinnacle of human achievement. Most people's
Traits range from 1 to 3; a 4 in a Trait indicates an exceptional
person, while a 5 is nearly incomparable - among humans, at
any rate. Think of this as similar to the "star" rating system of movies and restaurants - a 1 is barely passable while a 5 is
superb. It's also possible to have a zero in a Trait - this usually
represents a skill that the character never learned, but some
exceptions (such as the hideous Nosferatu's lack of an Appearance Trait) do occur.

X Abysmal Poor Average Good Exceptional Outstanding

Whenever you roll dice, you roll one die for every dot in the
appropriate Trait; for instance, if your character is trying to find
something and he has three dots in Perception, you would roll
three dice. However, you almost never simply roll the number of
dice you have in an Attribute; raw potential is modified by skill,
after all. The most common rolls in the game involve adding the
dice gained from an Attribute (p. 115) to the dice gained from
an Ability (p. 119).

For instance, if Veronica were trying to find a specific file in
a cluttered clerk's office, the Storyteller might have her player
Lynn roll Perception + Finance - an Attribute plus an Ability.
In this case, Lynn would take two dice for Veronica's Perception
of 2, plus as many dice as she had in Finance; Veronica has
Finance 4, so Lynn gets four more dice from that. Veronica has
a total of six dice tcr attempt her task. These dice are called the
dice pool - in other words, the total number of dice you roll in
a single turn. Most often, you'll calculate a dice pool for only one
action at a time, although you can modify it to be able to perform
multiple tasks in a turn (for more information, see the "Multiple
Actions" sidebar).

Of course, you might not need to add an Ability to an
Attribute for some rolls; for instance, there's no skill that will
help Veronica heft a small safe. In such cases, Lynn would use
only the dice from the Attribute - in this case, Strength.

There is absolutely no situation in which more than two
Traits can add to a dice pool. What's more, if your dice pool
involves a Trait whose maximum rating is 10 (such as Humanity
or Willpower), you can't add any other Traits to your dice pool.
It's effectively impossible for a normal human being to have
more than 10 dice in a dice pool.

Elder vampires, on the other hand...

Difficulties

There's no point in rolling dice unless you know what
results you're looking for. Whenever you try to perform an
action, the Storyteller will decide on an appropriate difficulty
number and tell you her decision. A difficulty is always a number
between 2 and 10. Each time you score that number or higher on
one of your dice, you're considered to have gained a success. For
example, if an action's difficulty is a 6 and you roll a 3, 3, 8, 7 and
10, then you've scored three successes. The more you get, the
better you do. You need only one success to perform most actions
successfully, but that's considered a marginal success. If you score
three or more, you succeed completely.

Naturally, the lower the difficulty, the easier it is to score
successes, and vice versa. Six is the default difficulty, indicating
actions neither exceptionally tricky nor exceptionally easy to
accomplish. If the Storyteller or rulebook ever calk for you to make
a roll, but doesn't give you a specific difficulty number, assume the
task is difficulty 6.

The Storyteller is the final authority on how difficult
attempted actions are - if the task seems impossible, he'll make
the difficulty appropriately high, while if the task seems routinely easy, the difficulty will be low (if the Storyteller decides
you even have to roll at all). Particularly easy or difficult tasks
might even demand difficulty numbers of 2 or 10; however, these
should be extremely rare. A difficulty 2 task is so easy that's it's
not really worth the trouble of a die roll, while a difficulty 10
action is almost impossible - you have an equal chance of
botching (see below) as you do of succeeding, no matter how
many dice you're rolling.

And, in case it needs to be said, a result of a 10 is always a
success, no matter the difficulty number.

Multiply Actions

Occasionally, a player will want her character to perform
more than one action in a turn - for example, firing a gun at
two different targets, or climbing a ledge while kicking at
pursuers below. In such situations, the player can attempt
actions normally, though all actions suffer a penalty.

The player declares the total number of actions he
wishes his character to attempt. He then subtracts a number
of dice from his first dice pool equal to the total number of
actions. Additional actions lose an extra die from their
pools, cumulative; if a dice pool is reduced to zero or below
in this manner, the action may not be attempted.

Example: Justin wishes his character, Hall the Nosferatu,
to throw a punch while simultaneously dodging two incoming
blows. Hall has Dexterity 3, Brawl 4 and Dodge 3. Justin
calculates the dice pool for the punch (Dexterity 3 + Brawl 4 =
7 dice pool), then subtracts three dice from it (because of the
three actions total), for a final dice pool of 4. The first dodge has
abase dice pool of 6 (Dexterity 3 + Dodge 3), minus four (three
for the number of actions, plus one for being the second multiple
action), for a final dice pool of 2. The final dodge has a dice pool
of 1 (6, minus three for the number of actions, minus an
additional two for being the third action attempted). Hall had
better be pretty lucky.

Vampires with the Discipline of Celerity (p. 153) may
take multiple actions without subtracting dice from their
dice pools. These extra actions may not themselves be
divided into multiple actions.

Failure

If you score no successes on a die roll, your character fails his
attempted action. He misses his punch. His pitch is a ball instead of
a strike. His attempt to persuade the prince falls flat. Failure, while
usually disappointing, is not so catastrophic as a botch (below).

Example: Feodor, a Nosferatu, is attempting to spy on some
suspicious-looking activities in one of the galleries of the sewers, and is perching precariously on an overhead pipe to do so. Justin the
Storyteller tells Feodor's player, John, to roll his Dexterity + Stealth
(difficulty 7). John rolls and gets 2, 5, 6, 6, 4, 3 - no successes.
Justin rules that as Feodor attempts to shift position on the pipe, his foot
slides on something slimy, and he loses his balance. The thugs below
don't see Feodor, but he is definitely in trouble...

The following charts should give you a good idea of
how to combine difficulties and degrees of success. Italics
indicate the average.

Difficulties

Three

Easy (installing software on a Macintosh)

Four

Routine (changing a tire)

Five

Straightforward (seducing someone who's already "in the mood")

Six

Standard (firing a gun)

Seven

Challenging (replacing a car's sound system)

Eight

Difficult (rebuilding a wrecked engine block)

Nine

Extremely difficult (repairing a wrecked engine block without parts)

Degrees of Success

One Success

Marginal (getting a broken refrigerator to keep running until the repairman arrives)

Bad luck can ruin anything. One more basic rule about
rolling dice is the "rule of one," or (spoken in a despairing tone)
"botching." Whenever one of the dice comes up as a "1," it
cancels out a success. Completely. Take the die showing "1" and
one of the dice showing a successful number and set them aside.
In this manner, an otherwise successful action may be reduced to
failure.

Occasionally, truly bad fortune strikes. If a die roll garners
no successes whatsoever, and one or more "1s" show up, a botch
occurs. In other word, if none of your dice comes up a success, and
there are dice showing "1s" (no matter how many), the roll is a
botch. If you score at least one success, even if that success is
canceled out and additional "1s" remain, it's just a simple failure.

A botch is much worse than a normal failure - it's outright
misfortune. For instance, rolling a botch when trying to gun
down a hunter might result in your gun jamming. Botching a
Computer roll when hacking into a system will probably alert the
authorities, while botching a Stealth roll is the proverbial "stepping on a dry twig." The Storyteller decides exactly what
goes wrong; a botch might produce a minor inconvenience or a
truly unfortunate mishap.

Of course, some Storytellers may find that botches are
cropping up a little too frequently in their chronicles (the laws
of probability often warp around dice, as any veteran roleplayer
can attest). In that case, it's the Storyteller's privilege to give
everyone, player and Storyteller character alike, one botch
"free" - in other words, the first botched roll of the session
doesn't count. This rule tends to make unlife a little easier on the
players - but then again, there's less chance of their enemies
suffering a run of bad luck either...

Example: Alexandra, a Tremere played by Merida, is desperately firing a gun through the windows of the chantry, whichare being
shot out by a marauding Sabbat pack. Merida rolls Alex's Dexterity
+ Firearms (difficulty 8), and gets 9, 1, 1, 8, 1. The "1s" more than
cancel out the successes, but because she rolled successes to begin
with, the action simply fails.

She's not so lucky next turn. The dice come up 1, 3, 4, 3, 7.
This time, not only did a "I" occur, but no successes were scored at
all, so the action is a botch. The Storyteller rules that Alexandra's
gun jams, and as she tries to force it, something crucial breaks,
rendering the gun worthless. Alexandra starts to crawl for the back
door, hoping that the pack hasn't found it yet...

Automatic Success

Let's face it - sometimes rolling dice gets tiresome, particularly when your character could perform a given action in his
sleep. And anything that streamlines play and reduces distractions is a good thing. Thus, Vampire employs a simple system for
automatic successes, allowing you to skip rolling for tasks that
your character would find frankly mundane.

Simply put, if the number of dice in your dice pool is equal
to or greater than the task's difficulty, your character automatically succeeds. No dice roll is necessary. Mind you, this does not
work for all tasks, and never works in combat or other stressful
situations. Furthermore, an automatic success is considered
marginal, just as if you'd gotten only one success on the roll; if
quality is an issue, you might want to roll dice anyway to try for
more successes. But for simple and often-repeated actions, this
system works just fine.

There's another way to get an automatic success on a roll: Simply spend a Willpower point (p. 136). You can do this only
once per turn, and since you have a limited supply of Willpower
you can't do this too often, but it can certainly help when you're
under pressure to succeed.

Trying It Again

Failure often produces stress, which often leads to further
failure. If a character fails an action, he may usually try it again
(after all, failing to pick a lock does not mean the character may
never try to pick the lock again). In such cases, though, the
Storyteller has the option to increase the difficulty number of the
second attempt by one. If the attempt is failed yet again, the
difficulty of a third attempt goes up by two, and so on. Eventually,
the difficulty will be so high that the character has no chance of
succeeding (the lock is simply beyond her ability to pick).

Examples of when to use this rule are: climbing a wall,
hacking into a computer system, or interrogating a prisoner.
After all, if you couldn't find a handhold, defeat the security
program, or get the prisoner to talk the first time, there's a
reasonable chance you might not be able to do it at all.

Sometimes the Storyteller shouldn't invoke this rule. For
example, failing to shoot somebody with a gun, detect an
ambush, or keep on another driver's tail are to be expected in
stressful situations. Such failure does not automatically lead to
frustration and failed future attempts.

Example: Winters, a diplomat for the Prince of Atlanta, is not
having a good night. He's at the table with a Nosferatu envoy in some
critical negotiations, and things aren't going well. When Winters
wishes to add a little witty Elizabethan repartee to smooth things over
with the lady, the Storyteller craftily suggests that Winter's player,
Edward, roll Wits + Etiquette (difficulty 6) in addition to roleplaying
his banter. Edward does so - and Winters fails to realize that his
antiquated compliment insults the Nosferatu (she, however, has no
difficulty informing him of the fact). He attempts to make amends, but
this time the Storyteller tells Edward the difficulty is 7; Winters is
under the gun, and another insult could break negotiations off entirely.

Complications

The preceding rules should be enough to get you going, and
for chronicles that favor storytelling over dice-rolling, they
might be all you ever need. However, they don't necessarily
cover all instances - for example, what if you're trying to do
something while a Storyteller character is actively trying to stop
you? What if your friend tries to help you break a code?

The various ways to complicate matters below are intended to
bring extra color to games. You certainly don't have to use them,
but they might add more realism and suspense to your game.

The following complications are relatively simple and
generic, usable to describe a wide variety of actions. For plenty
of situation-specific complications, see Chapter Six.

Extended Actions

Sometimes you need more than one success to accomplish
a task fully. For example, you might have to spend all night
tracking down obscure newspaper articles in a library, or climb
a cliff face that's impossible to scale in a turn. If you need only one
success to accomplish an action, the action in question is called
a simple action. But when you need multiple successes to score
even a marginal success, you're undertaking an extended action.
Simple actions are the most common in Vampire, but you will
have ample opportunity to perform extended actions.

In an extended action, you roll your dice pool over and over
on subsequent turns, trying to collect enough successes to succeed.
For example, your character is trying to dig a temporary haven in
the forest floor, using only his bare hands. The Storyteller tells you
that you need 15 successes to hollow out a den that provides
sufficient protection from the sun. You'll eventually succeed, but
the longer you go, the more chance there is of you botching and
collapsing the tunnel. What's more, if you have only so many turns
before dawn, the speed with which you finish your task becomes
doubly important. The Storyteller in all cases is the final authority
on which tasks are extended actions and which aren't.

You can usually take as many turns as you want to finish an
extended action (but situations being what they are in Vampire,
you won't always have that luxury). If you botch a roll, however,
you may have to start over again from scratch. Depending on
what you're trying to do, the Storyteller may even rule that you
can't start over again at all; you've failed and that's that.

Because extended actions are often quite apropos for describing certain feats, they're used frequently in Chapter Six.
FIowever, because of the amount of dice-rolling involved, extended actions should probably be kept out of the more intense
sessions of roleplaying.

Example of Extended Action

Veronica Abbey-Roth is trying to work up a large portion
of capital for a certain upcoming project others. Even though
she has Resources 4, the Storyteller rules that she'd have to
liquidate much of her belongings to get the money she wants.
So Veronica decides to play fast and dirty with her money,
running a number of illegal operations and playing a very
intricate game with the stock market to raise the money she
needs. The Storyteller decides that for Veronica to reach her
goal, Lynn will have to score 18 successes on an extended Wits
+ Finance roll (difficulty 7 - this is an intrinsically tricky way
to earn money). What's more, since this sort of thing takes time,
she can make only one roll per night of game time.

Veronica has Wits 3 and Finance 4, so Lynn rolls seven
dice each night. She gets three successes on her first roll -
things are opening up nicely. On her second roll, she gets two
successes, for a total of five. Unfortunately, luck isn't with her
on the third roll. She gets 3, 4, 1, 6, 4, 1, 6 - a botch! The
Storyteller rules that one of Veronica's brokers has gone sour,
and she's actually lost money on the transaction. But the efforts
of three nights' work have been neatly condensed into five
minutes or so of real time. As the game continues, Veronica is
left with a tighter budget for a while, and the choice of trying
again (and running the risk of attracting the Justice Department's
attention) or abandoning her grandiose plot...

Resisted Actions

A simple difficulty number might not be enough to represent
a struggle between characters. For instance, you may try to batter
down a door while a character on the other side tries to hold it
closed. In such a case, you'd make a resisted rott - each of you rolls
dice against a difficulty often determined by one of your opponent's
Traits, and the person who scores the most successes wins.

However, you're considered to score only as many successes
as the amount by which you exceed your opponent's successes; in other words, the opponent's successes e liminate your own, just
as "1s" do. If you score four successes and your opponent scores
three, you're considered to have only one: a marginal success.
Therefore it's difficult to achieve an outstanding success on a
resisted action. Even if your opponent can't beat you, he can still
diminish the effect of your efforts.

Some actions (arm-wrestling contests, debates, car chases)
may be both extended and resisted. In such cases, one or the
other of the opponents must achieve a certain number of successes to succeed. Each success above the rival's total number
in a given turn is added to a running tally. The first to achieve
the designated number of successes wins the contest.

Example of Resisted Action

Veronica, prowling for trouble at the latest Camarilla
soiree, has determined by night's end to spite her rival, a
Ventrue by the name of Giselle. Giselle arrived at the fete
with her latest childe in tow: Tony, a talented and delicious
young man with a medical license and a much-vaunted
pedigree. Veronica decides that there would be nothing
more amusing than stealing Giselle's childe away from her
for the evening - of course, that'll take some doing, as
Giselle will be watching him like a hawk.

Lynn (Veronica's player) and the Storyteller roleplay
out much of the initial three-way conversation (as well as
the covert knife-edged glances) between Veronica, Giselle
and Tony. Finally, the Storyteller has Lynn roll Veronica's
Manipulation (3) + Subterfuge (3), resisted by Giselle's
Manipulation (3) + Subterfuge (4). Lynn rolls six dice
versus a difficulty of 7 (Giselle's Manipulation + Subterfuge); the Storyteller rolls Giselle's seven dice versus difficulty
6 (Veronica's Manipulation + Subterfuge). Lynn manages
to score four successes, while Giselle remarkably manages
only three. Giselle's successes subtract from Lynn's, leaving
Lynn with one success. Tony opts to make the rounds with
Veronica, although her marginal success means he casts a
few longing glances back Giselle's way...

Teamwork

You don't always have to go it alone. If the situation
warrants (usually during an extended action such as researching
a family tree or decoding an Aramaic inscription), characters
can work together to collect successes. If the Storyteller decides
that teamwork is possible for the task in question, two or more
characters can make rolls separately and add their successes
together. They may never combine their Traits into one dice
pool, however.

Teamwork can be effective in many situations - dogpiling
on the prince's pet enforcer, shadowing a hunter or doing
research in the library, for instance. However, it can actually
prove to be a hindrance in certain situations (including social
interaction such as fast-talking or seducing a subject), and one
person's botch can bollix the whole attempt.

Action

Example

Description

Simple

Dodging a bullet, Sensing an ambush

Task is completed with one roll. The Storyteller announces the difficulty and the players roll dice. Automatic success is possible.

Extended

Mountain climbing, Research

Task is completed when a given number of successes are obtained, which may require more than one roll (which provides more chances of botching).

Resisted

Shadowing

A contest of skill between two individuals. They compare their number of successes; the character with the most successes wins.

Extended & Resisted

Arm wrestling

As a resisted action; the contest requires a given number of successes and may take more than one turn to complete.

This is the most important rule of all, and the only real rule
worth following: There are no rules. This game should be whatever you want it to be, whether that's a nearly diceless chronicle
of in-character socialization or a long-mnning tactical campaign
with each player controlling a small coterie of vampires. If the
rules in this book interfere with your enjoyment of the game,
change them. The world is far too big - it can't be reflected
accurately in any set of inflexible rules. Think of this book as a
collection of guidelines, suggested but not mandatory ways of
capturing the World of Darkness in the format of a game. You're
the arbiter of what works best in your game, and you're free to use,
alter, abuse or ignore these rules at your leisure.

Try It Out

Well, that's it. Those are the basic rules - everything else
is just clarification or expansion, the icing on the cake. If you
understand these rules, you should be able to play the game with
no problem. If you don't yet understand them, reread the section.
Better yet, try a couple of rolls yourself.

Let's say that Veronica has finally gotten cause to use that
snub-nosed revolver in her handbag - a carjacker is threatening
Marcus, her chauffeur. The difficulty for hitting someone at short
range is6 (see Chapter Six for more details on combat). Take three
dice for Veronica's Dexterity Attribute of 3, and one for her
Firearms Skill of 1. You have four dice in your dice pool - fair, but
not great. Now go ahead and roll. Count up your successes, but
don't forget to take away a success for every "1" you roll. Did you
make it? Did you botch? The more successes you get, the more
accurately placed the bullet (and the better the odds that the
carjacker won't be merely grazed and start returning fire).

Now try an extended and resisted action - we'll say a
debate. (It might not sound that interesting at first, but consider
that a debate held before the primogen council has some very
high stakes....) This will be an indefinite series of rolls, each one
perhaps using a different Trait and requiring different difficulties. You need to accumulate five more successes than your
opponent to prove your point and sway the council. A botch
eliminates all of your accumulated successes (you've made yourself look like a fool somehow).

- First roll: Each player rolls Charisma + Expression,
difficulty of the opponent's Wits + 3 (those opening remarks are
very important).

- Second and third rolls: As the debate heats up, each
player rolls Intelligence + Expression, difficulty of the opponent's
Intelligence + Expression.

- Fourth roll (and any subsequent rolls): Each player rolls
Manipulation + Expression (difficulty of the opponent's Wits +
Expression) to put the final spin on his argument.

This rules system is designed with flexibility in mind, and as
a result, there are about 270 combinations of Attributes and
Abilities. This daunting number is just the beginning, too - you
can certainly devise more Talents, Skills or Knowledges if you
think there's need. In this manner, you have a huge variety of
rolls to simulate actions-whatever you think is most appropriate. The following examples of rolls are meant to give you some
idea of the possibilities that might come up in a game.

- You're miles from your haven, and the sun will be up soon.
Roll Wits + Survival (difficulty 7) to find shelter for the day.

- You try to distract the bodyguard with your left hand
while surreptitiously slipping your knife back into your belt with
your right. Roll Dexterity + Subterfuge (difficulty of the
bodyguard's Perception + Alertness).

- You lock gazes with the gang leader, trying to cow him
into submission before his gang - of course, he wants to do the
same to you. Make a Charisma + Intimidation roll, resisted by his
Charisma + Intimidation.

- The ritual requires three days of nonstop chanting. Can
you stay awake even through the daylight hours to finish it? Roll
Stamina + Occult (difficulty 9).

- You need to board up the door to your haven in record
speed - and it needs to be durable, too. Roll Wits + Crafts
(difficulty 7).

- You've got access to the chantry library for exactly one
night - you'd better find the name you want quickly, but there
are a lot of books here. Roll Wits + Occult (difficulty 8) every
hour; you need to achieve 15 successes.

- It's not the message of the song, it's how good you look
singing it. Roll Appearance + Performance (difficulty 6) to have
your choice of groupies.

- How long can you remain motionless in the bushes while
the guards chat about the game? Roll Stamina + Stealth (difficulty 7). Each success allows you to hold still for one hour.

- It would be foolish to threaten your rival openly while in
the confines of Elysium. Roll Manipulation + Intimidation
(difficulty 8) to properly veil your threat without leaving her in
doubt as to your intentions.

- Suddenly, a man pushes a crate out of the van you've been
chasing - roll Wits + Drive (difficulty 6) to swerve out of the
way in time.

- Did she just threaten you? Roll Perception + Intimidation
(difficulty 5) to figure out what that Lick meant by that comment.

- You try to get his attention by driving your knife through his
hand and into the oak bar. Roll Strength + Melee (difficulty 6).

- You try to pull alongside the fleeing Mercedes so your
friends can leap aboard. Make an extended Dexterity + Drive
roll, resisted by the Mercedes driver's Wits + Drive. If you
accumulate five total successes more than his total successes,
you're in position. If he accumulates a total of five more successes
than you get, he escapes.

- The new gang in town's been awfully good at picking out
Kindred-run operations to take over. Roll Charisma + Streetwise
(difficulty 8) to see what people know about them. The more
successes you get, the more information you receive, but the
legwork will take an entire night regardless.

- What sort of alarm system does this place have? Roll
Perception + Security (difficulty 6).

Here we define a number of terms used in the rules that first-time players and new Storytellers might not be familiar with.

- Ability: These are Traits that describe what a character
knows and has learned, rather than her physical and psychological make-up. Abilities are Traits such as Intimidation, Firearms
and Occult.

- Action: An action is the performance of a deed, which is
a consciously willed physical, social or mental activity. When
players announce that their characters are doing something,
they are taking an action.

- Advantage: This is a catchall category that describes the
mystical Disciplines and Backgrounds of a character.

- Attribute: These are Traits that describe what a character inherently is. Attributes are such things as Strength, Charisma
and Intelligence.

- Botch: 1) A naturally rolled " 1,"which cancels out a success
die. 2) A disastrous failure, indicated by rolling one or more "1s"
and no successes on the 10-sided dice rolled for an action.

- Character: Each player creates a character, an individual
he roleplays over the course of the chronicle. Though "character" could imply any individual, we use it here to describe the
players' characters.

- Dice Pool: This describes the dice you have in your hand
after adding together your different Traits. It is the number of
dice you can roll for that action.

- Difficulty: This is a number from 2 to 10 measuring the
difficulty of an action a character takes. The player needs to roll
that number or higher on at least one of the dice in his dice pool.

- Downtime: The time spent between scenes, where no
roleplaying is done and turns are not used. Actions might be
made, and the Storyteller might give some descriptions, but
generally time passes quickly.

- Extended Action: An action that requires a certain
number of successes, accumulated over several turns, for the
character to actually succeed.

- Health: This is a measure of the degree to which a
character is wounded or injured.

- Points: The temporary score of a Trait such as Willpower
and blood pool - the squares, not the circles.

- Rating: A number describing the permanent value of a
Trait - most often a number from 1 to 5, though sometimes a
number from 1 to 10.

- Reflexive: A situation in which dice might be rolled, but
that does not count as an action for the purpose of calculating
dice pools. Examples of reflexives are soak rolls and Willpower
rolls to resist mind control.

- Resisted Action: An action that two different characters
take against each other. Both compare their number of successes,
and the character with the most wins.

- Scene: A single episode of the story; a time and place in
which actions and events take place moment by moment. A
scene is often a dramatic high point of the story.

- Score: The temporary value of a Trait or combination of
Traits used in a single roll.

- Simple Action: An action that requires the player to get
only one success to succeed, though more successes indicate a
better job or result.

- Storyteller: The person who creates and guides the story
by assuming the roles of all characters not taken by the players
and determining all events beyond the control of the players.

- System: A specific set of complications used in a certain
situation; rules to help guide the rolling of dice to create dramatic
action.

- Trait: Any Attribute, Ability, Advantage or other character index that can be described as a number (in terms of dots).

- Troupe: The group of players, including the Storyteller,
who play Vampire: The Masquerade, usually on a regular basis.

- Willpower: A measure of a character's self-confidence
and internal control. Willpower works differently from most
Traits - it is often spent rather than rolled.